


Small Fry

by 4persephone



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, In which pissing off Jedi masters is a really really BAD THING, Kanan Jarrus the Daddening, Promptfic, Time Travel AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-20 22:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13727499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4persephone/pseuds/4persephone
Summary: A cracky little ficlet that I wrote in reply to a what- if prompt that I got from a friend as I try to get my muse back up and running..."Give me a glance at KANAN as a time traveler, for once."





	1. And So It (Kinda) Begins

Kanan'd had no idea how his ‘reintroduction’ to Ezra was going to work out. He'd simply decided, less then a day post waking up in this familiar but also undeniably different timestream that there was no forced damned way that he could justify *not* going to Lothol to try and find his Padawan as quickly as he could possibly manage it. 

Kanan’d honestly had no clue until after he'd reached the base of the old communication's tower though, whether Ezra would even be living there yet or not, versus somewhere else in the city, nor how the barely eight year old pickpocket would react to a stranger suddenly showing up and trying for no apparent reason to befriend him.

Not well under his life's past circumstances, was Kanan's particular guess.

The older Jedi had had to warn himself more then once because of this to be cautious and go very easy initially- to remember that the kid would likely be understandably wary and watchful and curious. He knew that he would probably have to work for quite awhile to really earn the kid's trust back to what it had once been once the two of them were finally reunited. 

He hadn't expected the weather to be this cold once he'd finally reached Capital City's Transport Hub, though - nor had he had any way to foresee the way that the snow drifts would nearly as deep as he hastily rented a scooter and headed straight for the outskirts of the city -his anxious mind thrown wide open, stretching out with the force even as his eyes locked out in in the distance on the winter storm clearly blowing into the city just a few hours after him.

He'd pictured a lot of possible 'second first meetings' one he finally located Ezra, but what he most definitely hadn’t expected upon his appearance at the foot of Ezra's tower was to be greeted by the beginning of a familiar sort of brush of another mind against his own, which was rapidly followed after that by a rush of what could only be described as estatic elation. Just a few moments after that sensation registered he heard the sound of smalled rushed feet on the inner staircase, before Ezra finally emerged from the door at base of the structure, his small body shivering in the cold so hard he literally trembled.  
"Kanan! Kriff! Kark! Thank Force! Kanan! Kanan! Kanan!"

Seconds after that, Kanan oomphs softly from the impact of an admittedly petite and light body as he is basically tackle-hugged at the waist by a quaking, half hysterical Padawan who all but attempts to climb him like a tree even as Ezra repeats his Master's name - mantra like - over and over and over again.

The kid does and says nothing after that for at least half a minute though, excepting cling on to the front of his Master, his arms wrapping aoutomatically around Kan's hips as he instinctively lifts him like some kind of tiny alderaanian snow monkey, his whole body trembling with clear and and undeniable relief.

"You…ah...I take it that you know me then for some reason, Ezra?" He finally manages to force the words out past his shock, even as his arms automatically shift to better support the weight of the younger Jedi from underneath, pivoting automatically as he does so to put his back between the thinly clothed Ezra and the worst of the gale's blowing wind.

The tiny head bobs up and down from where it's half buried against his chest. "Yeah, I do Master. Though to be completely honest I didn’t expect that I would be seeing you for almost six and a half more years at the earliest." The voice when Ezra speaks again is definitely that of an eight year old boy, but at the very same time the returning maturity in Ezra's tone definitely isn't. Nor is the way he does his best to school his expression and still the majority of his shivering even though Kanan has no doubt he's not even one iota less freezing.

"I...I didn't realize that I was the only one this had happened to Kanan. At least, not after the way that I first woke up here almost two weeks ago in this version of my body, instead of in my eighteen year old one at the foot of my tower like I first intended to when I stepped into the between in the way I'd seen it done by the wolves."

'Eighteen year old body. Ah...' Full understanding dawns at last. Kanan's clearly not the only one dealing with either literal time travel or one hell of an ongoing prescient force vision at the moment then. "Ezra what exactly do you know in terms of what's going on at the moment?"

Ezra, pulls back from where his nose has been tucked into Kanan's chest just slightly, wiping a small hand impatiently against suspiciously damp bright eyesbefore eventually replying. "Just that this...all of this mess is my fault most likely. This is clearly why the Loth wolves warned me repeatedly not to ever try and step through the 'in between' without one of them there to act as a guide until I'd had further practice except for in the direst of emergencies. They weren't only just concerned by just how badly using that specific force talent seems to drain me..."

Yes Kanan remembers. The two times Ezra had gone off with them to practice he'd slept 12 plus hours a night unless someone forcibly woke him for over a week. Kanan had started to wonder if it was better to not even try but Ezra had insisted, saying the wolves had supported him learning the skill as well quite ardently.

Well that much at least explains some of why Kanan's most recent patchy group of memories before waking up in that hotel three weeks ago himself involve he and Ezra both entering some kind of maze of caves near the southernmost tip of the continent with a squadron of Imperials fighters hot on their tails. Their retreat to better defensive cover had been less successful then they'd originally hoped for, or so it seems.

"So we made it into the cave system the Wolves had told you about, but then they started bombing and the mountain range and the caves became unstable, forcing you to make a last ditch effort to step us both through space to somewhere safer - but we ended up here instead?" force but Kanan wishes right now he had clearer access to his own memories but they're foggy in a way he knows indicated before Ezra had done so Kanan had secured a serious concussion.

Ezra continues speaking now, wincing. "That's my best guess about what happened to us anyway... The wolves never really explained it all to me completely -even with with my gift f r connection there's a kark of a language gap in terms of covering all the specifics and attached other history, but like you said yourself that one time Kanan physicists say that time and space are all but inseperatably contected. So I guess it in hindsight it makes sense that moving through one improperly may lead to moving unintentially through the other if you don't know exactly what you're doing at the time. Force! I knew that it was a risky thing for me to to attempt at the time - I really did - because my ability to accurately select a final destination is still at best unreliable most of the times that I've tried- not to mention like I said even trying to do it at all is extremely physically and psychically draining and I was at less then peak condition at that time. To be fair though, it's never been more than a slight 'miss the target' issue whenever I practiced with the wolves before this happened...and even if it had been more obviously dangerous then that, the plain cold truth of the matter is that dying was our only other option as far as I could see at the time. The ceiling above us in the cave finally started to fall in beyond my ability to shield us from it... it was either I try to get us out of there the way that I did or just stay put and we both got crushed to death by falling debris. It was the best idea I could come up with under the circumsances. The entire place was caving in like I said and you were already unconscious. I was lucky I had enough focus at that point to try it at all frankly speaking."

Tiny hands start to frantically pat at Kanan’s chest then, assesingly, "Which reminds me, Kanan. Are you *all right*, Master?! Because you took a really nasty knock to the head ...not to mention that your left shoulder looked like it got dislocated. And from what I could see in the dim light before I we left your right leg looked to be broken in at least two separate places as well..."

The older Jedi finally interrupts, cutting off the rapid flow of panic words. "Take a deep breath Kid, I’m just fine Ezra... and now so are you at least hopefully." Kanan finally pries Ezra free from his current stranglehold around his master's upper body then eases him ginerly back down onto the snow covered ground - reaching out withohis right hand in order to squeeze the younger man's shoulder reassuringly at the same he also broadcasts as much calm and peace as he can. "When I first woke up in this timeline myself I didn't have a single scratch anywhere on me. Just one hell of a hangover." As well as, Kanan acknowledges to himself more then a little bit wryly, a whole host of other still unpleasant alcohol withdrawl symptoms he'd wrestled through while hastily selling some stuff he had in storage and then securing fast passage out of the system. "Look Ezra, I'm sorry that I wasn't able to get to Lothol more quickly then I did. It took a couple days for me to sucessfully scrape together enough money to secure hyperspace passage on a ship into this part of space, and even once I ...well I was still starting out on a planet nearly halfway across this section of the outer Rim."

Ezra just waves that apology off, clearly completely unoffended. "As I already said it's fine, Kanan. I managed okay on my own - it's not like I've never had to do so before. I knew how to survive. It's been a little rough at times yeah but not awful...just lonely. And COLD." The small boy's cheeks heat red then, his expression shifting to something clearly sheepish. "I'm...look, I'm really sorry about tackling you full force in the way I did when you first showed up,. I just kind of ...well...got bowled over by relief when appeared and were actually you. As I already said I honestly didn't think I'd actually be seeing any of the rest of you guys for literal years yet. And I certainly didn't expect you to know me on sight when you did arrive back on planet again."

And that, Kanan supposes, makes Ezra's initial reaction completely understandable. Nobody in their right mind is going to be left completely unruffled after experiencing a sudden round of unanticipated time travel no matter how centered and calm they usually were. Especially not on top of the added complications of massive physical and biochemical changes which Kanan didn't doubt were also aggravating the younger man's responses.

Kanan is humble enough to admit that that he at least had woken up as an actual kriffing adult, while the same definitely can not be said for his badly shell shocked apprentice who'd gone when he shifted from age eighteen to age eight. Not only that, but massive hormonal changes that implied set aside, Kanan's also smart enough right not to recognize that Ezra's probably as high as a kite on a combination of stress hormones, low blood sugar and nearly chronic exhaustion . If the kid wasn't a little irrational or overreaactive right now there'd be something far more serious wrong with him.

Kanan's surprised that Ezra's as collected as he apppears at the moment, speaking truthfully. After all it's not like the situation hadn't been grounds for a round of serious shock in both of them, and Kanan had wolen up at least with a roof over his head and a decentish amount of funds in his pants pockets. Even with all that considered, when Kanan himself had first woken and realized that yes, he could actually see the world all around him with his karking eyes again instead of just via use of the Force he’d just about had a kriffing heart attack. Once he’d finally stopped hyperventilating after sevral minutes of staring at his reflection in the mirror and the date on the chronocalendar by the bathroom - he'd also reconized that no - this all wasn't just the result of some kind of prolonged fever dream, or some kind of booze inspired hallucination, and he'd realized that really, as good at the bottle of whiskey on the desk had looked he'd had only two vaguely viable options in terms of how to cope through the next few years ahead...

First: he could try and pretend that none of what he was remembering was actually happening - that the future he'd experienced had been nothing but a force vision or a particularly vivid fever dream, and he could then forcibly climb back into the bottle for another couple of years until he had that belief shattered when he inevitably ran into Hera on Gorse again...

Or second, he could take what he remembered as the literalist ever of all kicks to the ass, dump out all the alcohol that was currently stockpiled in his room, order himself some food and re-karking hydrate while he tried to reorient himself to his current surroundings via a hot shower and some clearly needed meditation. Because at this point be it the force or the alcohol, the galaxy was clearly trying to tell him something.

Kanan had opted for the later option in reassuringly short order, for what he hopes to Force are glaringly obvious reasons. He'd dumped all the booze he could find, downed a handful of non prescription pain pills and a couple bottles of electrolyte replacement drink for his headache. Then he'd showered throughly and spent almost four hours in deep mediatation. After that he’d risen, drunk a few more bottles of sports drink and a hot cup of caf- not what he wanted but better then the alternative, and switched on the local newcast while simultaneously inhaling two seperate dinner entrees from the deli across the street from his pay by week residence.

Every single karking live broadcast that he'd been able to find in over 300 holo- channels had ended up being various live feeds of the upcomng yearly Imperial Empire Day celebrations...   
Which was when it had finally registered viscerally to Kanan that if he was currently barely twenty one years old and fresh off of drinking himself to death in a dirty hotel room on Moon Three of the Narys System, then *Ezra* was currently eight years old, completely alone, and in all likelihood surviving by eating out of trash bins in Capital City even as Kanan sat there on his forced damned stupid ass just *watching.*

He’d booked himself the first flight off of the planet that he could manage to secure after that, a bottle of black market Librium in his pocket and his emergency tradeables stash now liquidated into Lothalian friendly cred chits tucketed into his belt pocket along with his still disassembled lightsaber...arguing with himself all the way through hyperspace about about the potential chronal consequences of him interfering with Ezra's known past too much or too recklessly.

But at the same time? He also hadn’t been able to make himself have any other sort of current reaction. Because after all, everything that might happen differently if Kanan goes to find Ezra now comes down to kriffing hypotheticals, which in Kanan's opinons pales in comparison to what he can't bring himself to see as anything but much realer and more genunine need.  
The last time around after all, Kanan hadn’t known anything about the force-sensetive street rat who would one day become his Padawan- or about the grief, isolation and ongoing grimness that had marked Ezra's earliest years on the street. He hadn't known so he couldn't be held directly morally liable for personally enabling *six karking years* of malnutrition and ongoing psychological and emotional damage the way he would be enabling it by sitting back and doing nothing.

Kanan doesn't have that particular excuse anymore. Anything but. After four plus years of living with Ezra he knows at least some - if not most by this point- of what Ezra had endured to years of trying to help him move past it, and there isn't anything else that the older Jedi can do it good conscience but go and find his Force-damn kid as quickly as possible under these new circumstances- because six damn years is just too karking longfor him to stick his fingers in his ear, slam his eyes shut and try to pretend that it's not just happening again.

He'll ask forgiveness later if he has to for throwing away the exact future they all once had had, but he'll be damned in the meantime if he'll ask anyone's permission.

Ezra - who at this point is probably still completely unaware of his Master's current train of thought - once again wipes one small fist furiously over both of his eyes, muttering various silent curses as he does so even as he also shifts repeatedly back and forth, trying to keep his exposed frame warm despite the wind whipping repeatedly around them. And Force damn it does he have no actual weather appropriate clothing at this stage?

"Kark. Stupid tears. Stupid little kid hormones. Stupid, *stupid* me for getting us both into this force damned mess to kriffing begin with..." He finally lifts still wet eyes from his shoes to his master's worried face, "Like I said earlier I’m so, so karking sorry, about all of this, Kanan."

Kanan squeezes Ezra's shoulder yet again, making sure his voice is both low and soothing. Because after all, it's not like Ezra had really asked for this either. . Sometimes you just got dealt a bad hand, no matter how smart that you actually tried to play it. Those days the goal wasn't to win just to survive.

"You did the best you could when you were faced with a nearly impossible situation. I'm not at all, all right? Yeah everything is kind of a mess right now but it's still preferable to dead. Stop apologizing for making a tough call when I was unconscious that if I hadn't been I would have told you was probably still our best choice."

Ezra nods at that, his posture finally relaxing "Thanks. I'm sorry I'm being such a damn baby. But this past week especially - kriff, I just feel so force damned useless right now Kanan... I can't seem to manage to do anything but just fight hour by hour and day by day just to survive. There just haven't been the resources for it -muchless then kriffing time! I mean I intended initially when I first woke up here to try and hunt down the rest of the Pack. I figured that if I could find them maybe I could ask for some help sorting all of this out, but then I had a really rough first day in town…" He wipes at his eyes yet another time. "And no matter how desperately I've called out to them since then...They're not answering. Which means that they either don't care that I'm in trouble at this point or they just plain aren't around close enough to actually hear me calling. To be fair the last last sighting of the Lothwolves before the white one started showing itself to us ten years from now goes back at least a hundred years. They could be half way across the planet wth no reason at all to know to be listening for me. Not to mention...well just look at me Kanan! I can't get out to the closest of their caves or to the Temple on my own without literally freezing my ass off in the process. Not even with a speeder - cause I'm to kriffing short to effectively drive it!"

Kanan is definitely taking stock of the younger Jedi's condition, and yes he more then gets the picture. Force powers or not, Ezra’s still currently constrained by both his physical and financial realities right now ...and all the will power and intelligence in the the world doesn't change the fact he's still physically only eight years old, stuck trying all but desperately to navigate a society tailored to the completely reasonable assumption that kids his age are under the care of actual parents.

Ezra unfortunately though, has had no such protection up until today, only ingenuinity, intelligence and plain own stubborness, all which are admirable, but man does not live by bread alone. 

By the look of him Ezra is hanging on by the very edges of his metaphorical fingernails...in shock and isolated and bereft of any expectation until today that help has actually been coming he has been exhausting every single bit of energy that he has, just trying to stay warm and semi reasonably fed during each day as it passes. 

And then Lothol? Blessed his efforts with a Sith Bedamned Karking Blizzard.

Seriously? Who painted a target right on the back of this damn kid?

"Look, come on, okay? Let's get us both somewhere warmer." Kanan finally murmurs, first unzipping the front of his own warm wind tight parka, then reaching out again and lifting Ezra back up and off of his feet, settling the smaller Jedi carefully onto to his left hip before tucking him as best as he can totally out of the reach of the wind. His narrowing eyes shift to the twin moons at the edge of the dusk sky- both of which have started rapidly rising. The snow and cold aren't actually more then highly unpleasant yet, thanks mostly to his actually weather appropriate gear and his lunch filled belly from the transport on planet earlier, but Ezra’s own garb is dangerously close to tattered right now and some of the drifts around them are nearly up to his knees for the moment. 

"Look, what we both need right now, mostly, is just a warm, safe place where we can get under shelter before that gale from the northside finally blows the rest of the way in." Not to even mention that Kanan needs to get his apprentice both nutritious food and a safe location to bath without freezing stiff in the process. He winces slightly, not wanting to even think about how long it's been since the poor kid has had regular ongoing fresher access.

"I…Uhm...actually need to stay clear of town for the next couple of weeks these days, Kanan. It's probably best we just head upstairs and wait this out in my towerinstead. It might get a little cold at night I'll admit - especially when the wind is really blowing but we should be able to handle it fine, if you don't mind sharing body heat by sharing blankets. I've already got some provisions tucked away for this kind of situation that we can just eat our way through until this current storm passes, and after that Kanan, you can always make the trip back to town to get more supplies to eat as they're needed."

The hair on the back of Kanan’s neck stands up slowly in response, both to the unease in Ezra's tone and his Padawan's half pained expression, the force stirring suddenly in uncomfortable uneasy ripples of warning all around them...

"Uhm…and why exactly do you 'need' to avoid town right now, Ezra?" He keeps his voice carefully neutral. The kid does not need more stress right now - he's under enough pressure as it is. Still Kanan knows better then to not ask the question.

The younger Jedi fidgets uneasily for several long seconds, biting down on his lower lip, and then sighs very deeply, deliberately shifting his gaze from Kanan's own to the distant buildings before he speaks up again - voice soft but also painfully candid.  
"Because, Kanan... there are some…people... in the southern two districts of Capital City right now who don’t particularly like being told 'no' by smart assed little street rats when they make them a job offers. Especially when said street rats are apparently as 'marketable' as someone like me. They’ve spent the last six weeks or so agressively trying to recruit me and every time they track me down to 'talk' the encounters get progressively more nasty. The guys in question aren't ISF level but that doesn;t mean they're not efficient and nasty. Even with you here now I really doubt it's smart for me to court another run in with them right now, especially if you don't want to end up drawing uncomfortable attention..."

Kanan's forehead wrinkles up, "They've been trying to recruit you…into some kind of a gang, I take it?" Ezra must always have been a natural talent then, in terms of pickpocketing if they're recruiting him this young.

The kid shakes his hand . "No…more as a…as an kind of contractable ‘entertainment employee'. Which for the record is not and *never will be* my sort of thing." 

Ezra shifts his eyes back toward Kanan then, very very, very carefully. His smile is falsely bright - as if inviting Kanan to join him in seeing the ..humor?... of whatever he's about to say next, "On the bright side, they aren't going be a problem for either of us for all that much longer, Kanan. From what I remember of this time period...and this winter in particular is kind of hard to forget...they're about to get themselves booted out the city entirely by one of the other major crime syndicates. Things... got a lot better last time around for me after that finally happened after the planet's winter solstice."

"They are trying to 'recruit you' at eight years old. As ...as an'entertainment' employee?!" Kanan feels his arms tighten around Ezra's smaller form instinctively even as his eyes shift from Ezra to glare toward the city still in the middle distance...automatic protective hackles roused to full strength and his lips curling back just a little to reveal his teeth.

"Yeah ..but it their...well okay not in their defense exactly, but you have to understand, Kanan. It's..uhm...a pretty common form of employment for kids here in the Capital - especially during this coldest part of the the year. Demand is high and the clientele tends to be generous. Or at least that's what some of the other kids they sent to recruit me first used to tell me. So I wasn't being singled out exactly...not at first anyway. They just...someone telling them no...and me especially. That's a serious challenge to their authority which is serious currency out here. I never personally...a few people helped me otherways, I got lucky..but even after they weren't in town...the option to do that sort of thing never disappeared completely. And some of the other kids I knew...you do what you have to, to survive, I guess, is what I mean."

"Ezra, you don't need to try and justify..."

"This was a really bad winter. The worst I remember there actually being. We...the gang of littles who worked the markets then...a couple of them didn't actually survive it. Normally the snow stays further north then this -we get a couple of lighter dustings a season, sure, but usually you just have to outlast the cold a couple weeks. But every other decade or so there's this shift in the solar output patteners, and when they happen it can...It does, get pretty rough. People starve for lack of business or stored supplies...or they just freeze. Your only other real option for surviving in those years other then that is to try to tuck away a supply for those coldest weeks and just lay low. But that requires both a good spring and summer pickpocketing season and a bolthole that no one else can find to raid or otherwise destroy."

The kid glances back over his shoulder toward his waiting tower then with a look so pathetically grateful thats it's all but painful to see. Ezra...Ezra had shared a lot about his history with Kanan, gradually over the course of four years, as the two of them had slowly built trust, but he'd certainly never mentioned anything like this until the present conversation.

'So then what you're not saying - well outright anyway - is that the only options available to the street kids during the bad winters here in Capital City are usually either gang sponsored child prostitution or dodging frostbite and starvation on an ongoing regular basis?'

Ezra sighs heavily as if somehow aware of his master's thoughts, "Yes it sucks but at the same time...look it just is what it is..."  
It shouldn't have to be.

Kanan feels his jaw tighten a little in reaction sudden age on his Padawan's face - no not age, experience and hard won cynicism, that'd he'd remained as receptive to opening back up again at all by age fourteen if this had been him by eght was a miracle really. "Who...who *exactly* are these...'people' that are trying to 'recruit' you in town at this point? And while I'm on the topic for how long have they been actively making your life difficult?"

Far more difficult for any eight year old then it should justly be.

Ezra's responds to that question with a sharp look toward his master which is both wry and desert dry - his shoulders shuddering with a snorted little laugh even as he shakes his head back and forth in clearl automatic refusal. "Ohhhhh no. I'm not arming you with. Not when at this point as I just mentioned earlier it'll be back to literal water under in just a couple of weeks... Discretion is the better part of valor as you're always quoting to me."

Another force damned month or two? With the two of them presumably hiding the entire time out here in Ezra's tower like a pair of frightened loth-rats in an abandoned building's venting system. By which point Ezra'll no doubt be even more phsyically and psychologically compromised then he clearly is already. 

And so his head shakes no in an automatic, emphatic refusal to Ezra's suggestion. Because seriously, if the kid actually thinks for even a mintute right now that either of them are going to be staying out here without running water or heat when Kanan's got more then adequate money in his pockets for better, then the kid's clearly lost his grip on kriffing reality. 

"If anyone becomes a problem while we are sheltering in town then I’ll *deal with them* Ezra. Discretely, if needed. But there is no way in Sith Hells that you and I are going to be staying out here for multiple nights during a Karabast blizzard in temperatures they're already predicting will drop well below freezing. Now…where’s the best hotel or boarding house you can think of at the moment that's both close by and outside this gangs normal stomping groundsUntil after I can hit the sabaac tables and find us something better and more permanent for quartering, I mean?"

Ezra’s face automatically screws up in reply to that question- preparing to argue the issue further by the looks of it. Kanan simply covers his mouth - gently - with his much larger, still gloved fingers. 

"Name and location, Ezra. Now. Or I swear to Force and by all that is holy that I'll just find a place I think is suitable on my own. Regardless of what you think about it's amenities or actual location. This topic? Is not open to further discussion. Now pick - or bedtime starts plummeting by five minutes every thirty seconds once we're indoors from nine all the way down to seven."  
Ezra grumbles behind Kanan's hand, before he finally nods and pulls back, chewing on his lower lip for several seconds in clear, deep contemplation and disgruntlement, (Kanan seeing the later, doesn't count the seconds for that since he's aware Ezra's actively thinking until the kid ultimately provides his Master with the name of hotel located on the northeaster side of the city.  
Kanan, noting that Ezra has finally, finally *stopped* shivering even though the temperatures around them are now continuing to plummet, still does the best that he can to zip the kid completely inside the cover of his jacket before striding back toward the speeder that he’s rented, and turning it over into life, cursing silently even as he does so that he hadn't thought to at least bring a second set of gloves or an extra hat along with him. 

(Which had been just foolishness and lack of foresight really. He’d been so intent upon first hitting dirt-side and noting the weather reports on finding Ezra in his markets or getting out to his Tower that he'd failed to stop and think about what might actualy be needed to triage Ezra's needs once he actually found him. It was stupidly shortsighted of him really. But then he'd still been trying to reassure himself he would in fact recognize Ezra at age eight.)

Ezra - now sitting in front of Kanan as he guns on the engine - falls completely as the head at last back in the direction of the capital- his whole body hunkered in against Kanan's broader one - the younger Jedi clearly happy to use his Master for now as his own living breathing portable electric blanket while his will surrenders at last to his body's greater need for rest. Indeed, by the time that the two of them finally make it to the southeastern most border of the city and Kanan glances briefly down, Ezra is literally asleep against Kanan's chest; huddled into a warm, sleepy ball of incredulously small looking child who's resting against his master's stenum all but bonelessly.

Kanan sighs softly to himself at the sight, but makes no further effort to wake Ezra, even as he tugs the zipper of his coat collar up nd completely over the top of Ezra's curly head - figuring that there's no real point in waking the younger man until they've reach adequate shelter again.

All Ezra's attempted reassurances earlier aside, the past few weeks have obviously been a literal hell for his Padawan. Kanan knows karking well that Ezra's probably been on all autopilot for literal days now, taking things one crisis at time and growing more and more overextended as his situation became more and more. 

Six kriffing years? That's how long the kid had thought he was going to have to keep it together without reinforcements. That's an almost insanely long time for anyone - including a kriffing adults, to think that they had to holdout and endure all alone before any kind of help would be incoming.

Kanan had certainly never imagined when he first woke up that he'd be sitting here thinking anything of the sort, but under their current circumstances, he's actually kind of *glad* that he and Ezra were both trapped together in that cave when it had started collapsing, considering what he now realizes were some of the karking alternatives. 

If they both have to endure this road - this now mutual journey - a second time around, well then at least this time neither of them will have to face it alone. They'll both have someone now to lighten the load hopefilly share all of the resultant burdens.  
Granted that doesn't mean the situation is going to be easy - for Ezra especially, initially. He's certainly the one most off balance - the one most in need at the moment. 

Right now the older Jedi forces himself to acknowledge more then a little grimly, it's probably better then even odds that even if he dumps the kid headfirst into a warm bath the moment that they get into a room, and follows that up by force feeding him nutritious food and vitamins the kid is still going to be vulnerable and need of herd riding for weeks yet.

Before even touching the topic of their most recent conversation.

Still, it could have gone much worse then it actually had, Kanan reminds himself more then a little bit grimly. He could have reached Capital City only after the blizzard- making it all but impossible for him to find Ezra until afterwards. Or worse yet Ezra could have had another run in with that currently unnamed group of Banthashits he's clearly focused on avoiding at the moment  
That group of presumable child pimps, that yes, Kanan is going to eventually be locating speaking with. 

In the meantime though, they’re together and about to be reasonably provisioned and safe. that's all he's concerned with. For now at least anyway.

Today's problems for today. Tomorrow's for Tomorrow.


	2. Seeking Shelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And this suddenly got way less cracky. As Small Fry veered straight into completely unexpected 'Too Much Honesty AU' Territory. TW for discussion of previous attempted childhood molestation and Frank Discussion of Big Cities, Gangs and their roles in Childhood Prostitution

"Ezra?"

"...I’m fine, Kanan."

"You’ve been in there for almost two a half *hours* now." Kanan points out mostly tactfully, as he stands by the room's closed bathroom door and shifts back and forth on his feet anxiously, reminding himself sternly that there is a line between reasonably and ridiculously over protective.

"...Are you asking because you need to use the bathroom yourself?" His Padawan finally calls back, after a moment or two of protracted silence..

"It definitely wouldn’t hurt." Kanan admits, cause yeah he would lik a shower of his own too eventually. "Though truthfully Ezra, right now I’m checking to make sure that you haven’t...ohh I don't know, sprouted a set of backup gills or gone down the drain after coverting to a human stew or something."

There’s a soft snort from the other side of the bathroom door at that and then an involuntary brief childlike giggle, then after that there's the sound of descending water as a drain cap is most likelu finally twisted back open. "Uhm……I'm on the way out, Kanan. Just gimme a minute here to get dressed." 

Kanan hears water splashing and then the distinct sound of feet slowly approaching… right before unmistakable clicking sound of a lock flipping open. A moment after that the door cracks open just far enough for a small, pale skinned arm and Ezra's face to thrust imperiously out. "Is there like…I don't know...a blanket or something that I can wrap up in out there?"

Kanan raises a brow at the question. "Are you really still that cold, Ezra? Heat comes with the room you know. We can just turn up the heat if the stuff you have on isn't keeping you warm enough."

The eight year old just grimaces, retreating, then makes a gimme gesture with his hand. "Nah...Just gimmee. I feel like being a burrito at the moment."

Kanan snorts softly at that description but then he simply nods, handing Ezra the lighter and softer of the two extra blankets currently thrown across the foot of the rooms queen sized bed. Ezra’s arm and blanket disappear as one then, then reappear just moments after that as he finally re-emerges into the main room, the dark green flannel blanket enfolding him like a massive hooded cloak from his head to his toes... "Bathroom's all yours..." He informs Kanan with a seemingly carefree motion of his free hand. "Sorry about keeping you waiting. Didn’t mean to deliberately leave you in agony...if you'd wanted in earlier you could have just said something, you know."

"I figured you'd appreciate the chance for a long soak...." Ezra after all, had had more than just a few days of grime to initially scrub off when Kanan had first nudged him awake on the speeder and then carried him into hotel main lobby which due no doubt to the oncoming storm had been absent its service desk attendant - the owner a Rhodian had been securing extra blankets for several requesting guests in one of the building's storage rooms.

Ezra for his own part, once Kanan had finally rung the desk bell for assitance , had simply disappeared briefly into the attached bathroom and scrubbed clean his face and hands as fast as he possibly could, before reemerging and tugging insistently at his master's closer hand. Kanan had looked down in response to the gesture, smiling at the much cleaner if more freckled visage, and then he' d nodded almost absently when Ezra had requested some cred chits. He'd left moments later 0promising the older Jedi that while Kanan dealt with any needed paperwork for a room rental he’d run to the store a few doors down and acquire a supply of snacks and drinks for them to munch on, as well as a clean set of sleep stuff for them both if anything suitable for that task could be found, which had seemed a more then reasonable request to Kanan.

Because of that the elder Jedi had responded by looking out the main window at the ever darkening sky for a moment before nodding a little reluctantly and forking over the current contents of his left hip pants pocket, but only after topping Ezra’s mass of dirty curls with the hat from his own head as well as impulsively draping the kid nearly down to his thighs in the well padded winter jacket the older man had been wearing.

"...Get something upstairs with a balcony level entrance if you can manage it, okay? And don't mention that it's actually the two of us...not yet. " Those words had been Ezra’s only other room related advice...before the younger Jedi had darted swiftly out the lobby’s main entrance, leaving Kanan slightly puzzled as to why Ezra had specified either request.

By the time that Kanan had finished registering with his current fake ID and paid for their room for at least three days, the only one coincidentally that was currently left …Ezra had apparentely already finished up with his own self assigned errand. He stood waiting by where Kanan had park the rented speeder under cover, right next to the balcony steps, his exposed nose and cheeks chapped by the blowing wind.

"You could have just come back inside to wait for me to finish up, you know..." Kanan had scolded the younger Jedi affectionately, reaching out all but automatically and liberating all but one of Ezra’s three shopping bags from his overloaded grip while simultaneously shouldering his own pack of the back of their transport and onto his back.

"Nah... Like I said before, Kanan, it’s probably better for now that they just assume that you’re here on your own...we'll correct that assumption once I'm cleaned up. Especially with me looking like I do at present. This particular part of town isn’t exactly a go zone for us loth rats - not even for those accompanied their by quote unquote relatives. Best case if the proprietor had seen me before I could scrub off all the dirt you would have been stuck with an extra room cleanng fee and serious downgrade in your long term reputation."

Kanan had briefly opened his mouth at that admission for several long seconds...before ultimately pressing his lips back together tightly and nodding in acceptance of the advice instead. He' d started kind of hating the whole damn planet at that moment, given what it's silent condoing on societal level had faced an kriffing eight year old to accept as well as understand.  
"Well come on, then …" He’d gestured what he hoped was genially to the staircase in front of them. "I want you upstairs and out of those dirty clothes and into a bath with a whole bar of soap as quickly as it can be managed…because no offense, Kid but on top of all the dirt on you you're kind of more then a little rank at the moment."

Ezra had mock gaspsed in reply to this apparent insult, putting one small hand up to his chest, his apparent affront very obviously feigned. "And here I’ve been so nice to you up until now by not commenting about you own disaster of a look, Master... but if we're going there now...You're very…retro geekish... Nice haircut Kanan."

"Ah shut it Kid...." Kanan had shot back, hand raising instinctively to his shorter mop of hair - which was nowhere near long enough to try and pull back into any kind of ponytail yet.

Ezra just dimpled in reply. "No seriously, Master. I can see why you ultimately grew it out. With it short you are the literal definition of a natural baby face." 

Kanan had smirked in spite of himself in reply, gently elbowing the kid with his own closer arm as he let them both into the room. "Well there' s a case of the pot calling the kettle pitch black don't you think. You were a literal pixie at this age weren't you.."

"Ouch. Talk about hitting a guy when he's already wounded right where it hurts. Believe me though, I'm more then happy for a chance at the shower first, if you're really offering, Kanan. The issue as I see it right now though, is that everything else around here is about to close down as well. At least until tomorrow lunchtime at the absolute earliest.. Which means, if you want actual hot food and not just an assortment of snack type stuff like what I picked up earlier then you better move fast - because the restaurant two doors down had a sign up when I walked by saying it was locking up in another halfan hour, so you need to haul ass down there if you plan to while there is still time.."

Kanan had nodded in agreement, barely resisting the urge at the time to raise an eyebrow at Ezra's clear sudden shift in overall vernacular - his Padawan wassn't usually this glib Kanan's own past experience -unless he was deliberately using said glibness as a method of either self distraction or misdirection. Both which had seemed like good possibilities at present

He could wait it out though. Given the incoming storm they had nothing right now but time.

"Is there anything in particular that you are craving right now, while I'm ordering for us Ezra…?"

The eight year old had just slipped off his hat and his master's jacket in answer - tossing both onto the chair by the room's lone small circular table, before shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, "Said restaurant hasn’t exactly been in my current price range ...like ....ever. Go with what sounds good that's not too rich. I'm not picky right now, Kanan."

Kanan had nodded in affirmation to that advice and then turned back to the room's double locked door. "Use all the soap in there if you need - I have extra if we run out in a tin in my pack."

Ezra had nodded in affirmation to that advice, shutting the door firmly beyond Kanan as the older man departed.  
And that, quite simply put, had been that.

Now two plus full hours later, Kanan finally slips around the emerging Ezra and into the next room in order to take his own turn at relieving himself - noting even as he does so the distinct lack of ring around the tub which he’d initially expected to encounter upon entering the room, as well as the bottle of juice and the opened packet of crackers on the tub's wide front ledge..  
Ah…so then the kid must have quckly showered initially while Kanan was still at the restaurant getting the both of them their dinner, and then afterward opted to grab himself a snack and soak his nearly frost bitten body warm for as long as he was allowed to get away with it..until Kanan ultimately chased him of the smaller room so her could make his own use of it.  
"There’s plenty of hot soup, Ezra - vegetable rice or meat and potato were the two that they had left. Both are sitting abov ethe reheater at the moment …and there are dinner rolls if you want 'em in a bag by the Holovid player…There's also a couple choices for different entrees in then the room's cooler if you're up to something more significant. "

"Okay. Thanks." The soft but eager reply is accompanied by the rustling of a paper bag and then the sound of a cooler door schicking open.

When Kanan emerges from the bathroom himself just a couples of minutes later Ezra throws a distinctly grateful look in his Master's direction from where he is currently sitting - still swaddled from his literal head to his toes- in the middle of the just slightly sagging mattress. "Thanks." The younger Jedi murmurs softly, all the while taking slow, meticulous bites of the food that's currently resting in his lap with the exact kind of deliberate chewing and pacing that makes Kanan think it’s most likely Ezra's actively fighting the urge to gorge on as much food right now as he can after long. long weeks of probably painful deprivation.

Kanan doesn't comment on it just regretfully remembers the exact same kind of previous instinct.

"So how you doing, right now Ezra…everything staying down so far?" He's careful to keep the question mostly casual. Concerned but not accusing or interrogative. Though yes he is worried about how long Ezra's been on half rations or even less then that at present.

Ezra shrugs a little sheepishly. "For the most part, yeah, Kanan. It’s just been…awhile…since I last ate anything quite as substantial as what you picked up. And I learned the hard way after my folks first disappeared and I started hitting the local restaurant dumpsters that gorging …no matter how tempting the look and the smell of the food is..."

"Just results in everything coming right back up after you've shoved it down, again?"

Ezra’s small head nods, his eyes still locked on the soup bowl, though his small smile at least looks genuine. "Yeah. Especially if I don't work up to richer kinds of food a little. It' s why I started with some plan juice and crackers in the bathroom room before attempting anything else. Puking all over the only bed in the room because I can't be bothered to slow down seems like a really, really ungrateful move under the circumstances. I'm just... going to need go a little for a day or to I guess."

Kanan nods again and then chuckles a little, reaching out to squeeze Ezra's shoulder one more time briefly through the checked, fuzzy blanket, before retrieving a half finisheshed drink of his own from the desk by the room’s small holo- screen and retwisting it open. He drains it dry before continuing with what he'd been saying. "So...how about now that you're clean and on your way to decently fed, we both do a basic sit rep. Cause we really haven’t had the chance to do one formally, and it seems like a smart idea given our current circumstances. "

Ezra's only visibly response is a slight stiffening of his body that Kanan can all feel hear him try to order himself out of mentally, then the younger jedi gives a half shrug in reply followed by a small nod of his still damp head. "No problem."

Kanan seriously doubts it's as simple though as that. Still it's probably best to begin with a little openess from him.

"Me first I guess. Like I told you earlier Ezra, I initally ended up waking up here without so much as a scratch on me ...I was just a little bit shell shocked I'm doing pretty well at the moment if maybe suffering from younger me's higher ingestation of alcohol then I drank in the years you and I knew eachother. Mostly though I'm just finding it ...strange ...to adjust to having my regular sight back this way again."

"You seem to be coping pretty well," The words are a genuine compliment, as is the small almost smile his padawan in now aiming at him.

"And as for you Ezra......well you’re clean, warm and fed now, Kid… but I still have to ask just for the record. .. do you have any other issues right now that need triaging? Yes we talked about the guys in southside earlier - and I'll have more questions about that later but for now though I'm asking specifically do you have any unmet physical needs or issues other then a need for more sleep. Do you need assistance with Force Healing or need any other meds or care at the moment?"

Ezra pauses... for *just* a moment too long before ultimately replying, "I’m...I'm fine right now, Kanan." He says eventually, sipping on another spoon full of liquid as he lifts it from the bowl in his lap. "Nothing really worth worrying over right now or otherwise mentioning..."

'Strike one.' Kanan thinks to himself without so much as a word, arching a knowing eyebrow at the eight year old and simply waiting. He knows by now that when Ezra lies most sucessfully to him he does so by omission. He's largely awful at lying directly to Kanan. Which the older Jedi suspects is why he rarely bothers, choosing instead to remain mute when he's conflicted but not ready to talk until it's no longer left as an option.

Ezra squirms awkwardly in his seat, sighing deeply, then briefly reaches up to rub at his forehead before his eyes shift to a spot just to Kanan's left - looking near but not in fact directly at him as if that makes the conversation easier. "Look, it's nothing serious…but then again, considering our kriffed up defensive situation right now…I should probably at least acknowledge that now... I’m not exactly at my best physically speaking at present. I’ve got some mild to moderate frost bite in various fingers and toes...but then again that's hardly shocking given the weather right now. I...I've also got some pretty severe patches of bruising. They green yellow now after starting out black-blue. They look...well....way worse then they feel at the moment. Just promise me you'll...kark...try not to flip out to badly when you where they are, okay?"

'Strike two,' the older Jedi darkly adds on to his mental tally feeling increasingly more and more grim as he does so. Because this? This is Ezra trying to brace both himself and Kanan for some kind of revelation that is going to be really *really* unpleasant.  
"Ezra why don't you start again by stopping attempt to diffiuse me and just show me whatever it is you're trying not to instead." Because Kanan is neither literally blind nor stupid...he knows full well that the kid had brought sleep sweats and a t-shirt into the bathroom with him earlier. And Kanan had jacked up the heater silently after first passing Ezra his requested blanket earlier. The only reason the kid'd still be wearing the blanket with the room this warm is because of what his sleep clothes don't cover but his blanket robes does.

The younger Jedi nods reluctantly in response to that piece of advice, then shifts from his place in the center of the mattress, pivoting awkwardly away from Kanan in order to put his half full food bowl on the bedside table beside him before speaking up - still reluctantly yet again.

"Okay... but like I said try not to freak out too badly, okay? I swear to you, Master… No matter what it *looks like*…I swear.. I... I got away from the people who did it before....before anything really bad could actually happen."

Kanan rears back instinctively then, his voice tight and hoarse and just to the left of outright furious, at the same time his own Master's voice echoed in his head, "Remember Caleb...go easy. '"Which means *what* exactly, Ezra?" He forces himself to breathe in an out slowly, to keep his tone gentle amd his body language relaxed. Because Ezra? Isn't actually the one he's likely to be pissed at, in a moment.

The kid just sighs again, deep as whole oceans, taking on the look on the older Jedi's face before he's reluctant stands up and lets the blanket drop to the floor from around his too thin shoulders, uncurling from where his legs lay tucked halfway underneath him and shifting deliberately to the side of the bed across from where Kanan is currently standing, his small hands knotted in unconscious defensive fists on either side of him. He breathes in deeply once, then rises.

Kanan's teeth clench hard. Strike. One. Thousand. And. Kriffing. Ninty. Three.

Kanan is going to ...he is going to find those men and he is going to. karking. kill. them. Because yes, Ezra's right arm - which his padawan had held out to Kanan earlier when he'd requested his camoflauging blanket - had been free of any kind of visible bruises, but his left arm and his right shoulder where it hangs at the oversized neckline, aren't nearly so lucky. They - as well as the other gaps of visible markled skin all reveal multiple clear yellow green impressions of rough, adult sized hand grips.   
The kind used in an effort to hold down a small child who was struggling…to pin them.

"Are you…? Did they...?" His voice cracks then. Are there any more of these kind of abrasions or...or any other kinds of injuries Ezra's going to need help with? does he need to see a doctor. Is this just really the bottom of the most profane sort of list.  
No. Please Force no. Because if Ezra was actually ra...The thought sputter outs. And Force he can't even let himself finished the sentence in his head, much less say it alound. If his Padawan was..was recently sexually assaulted... at only eight karking years old, and now he;s having to live through the physical aftermath of it twice...

Kanan might just lose his damn mind.

And he can't do that. Because Ezra is the one who needs the actual help at the moment.

His Padawan meanwhile, is still shakey but also relentlessly talking. Low and little bit desperately yes, but with determinationation and fear not brokeness in his eyes. Ezra's gaze is locked on his master' s face - he looks both uneasy and ashamed. As if he' s fully aware of the swirling storm of Kanan's own thoughts at the moment, and feels a highly irrational but nearly desperate need to calm it. 

"I....I’ve got a few more sets of bruises that look about as bad as these are, Kanan…one on my left side near my rib cage and...a matching set on either side of my hips. But nothing bad actually happened, do you hear me? I fought them off before anything worse then bruises happened."

Ezra’s voice is choked - a little wobbly with his sheer desperation to be heard - to be believed as he forces himself to keep up the steady flood of ongoing reassurance. "I mean yeah - a pair of guys cornered me a day or two before I first woke up here while I was scrounging for food. They boxed me in, but my mom taught me how to fight back if someone tried to hurt me like that... Practically before I could walk okay? I fought them off - even though they'd doubled up to make it easier to trap me....I kneed the kriff out of both of them, Master, as hard as I could. And then I just karking ran. " 

Ezra’s small hands rise to Kanan’s shoulders then and shake him - hard as he can at the moment. 

"I'm okay now, all right, though. They haven't managed to catch me out again since that happened. I've been on guard...ironically waking up with the bruising the way I did gave me some kind of warning. It was practically a blessing! As for the rest of it…It's more then a decade of water under the kriffing bridge these days for me. Nothing that can't be fixed up as good as new with just a little hot water and caution and a few days of slapping on some decent bacta cream." 

Kanan responds to this literal torrent of words - to the near desperate flood of ongoing reassurance by doing the only two things that he can do at present. Because he'll be damned if he stands her and lets Ezra be the only one doing any sort of comforting at the moment.

So he deliberately reaches for calm, forcibly willing the anger out of his body, and then he lifts his eyes to meet Ezra’s own, his gaze and tone both affectionate and more then a little bit wet.

"I...I really want to hug you, right now, Ezra. Would that be all right for me to do?"

His Padawan studies him for a moment before nodding, stepping silently into his master's tight embrace with a shakily exhaled breath, and without, Kanan notes wth deep relief even the slightest trace of fear or rejection in response to the tough in either his evident mindscape or his body language.

"I'm fine. It'll all be all right now, Kanan," He softly repeats the words again, his face pressed into Kanan's collar. "It's okay really. I'm fine. I promise."

Kanan hugs him back- gently but somehow also fiercely - his own face buried in the dark curly mop Ezra's hair for several long minutes after that without either of them making any kind of effort to speak aloud again.

Because truthfullly, there probably aren't any words good enough right to do the job at the moment.


	3. And so it begins - part three

Ezra doesn't ever cry - not even once during the entire half hour that Kanan just sits there and holds him. And holds him the older Jedi does: the kneeling hug that he first bends to offer his Padawan shifting from that to him lifting Ezra silently off of the floor and then sinking down into the room's nearby arm chair - Ezra ending up all but craddled in Kanan's lap without so much as a word. The older man tucks the second blanket from the back of the chair around himself and the eight year both just instinctively, mindful of the kid's increasingly whole body tremor - which isn't entirely temperature based, even if as far as Kanan is currently guessing. Then the two of them sit there in the semi darkness -half hugging, half cuddling for several long tenuous minutes.

"Kriff." Ezra finally murmurs softly, breaking the over arching silence with deep regret in his tone. "I'm so sorry about all of this, Kanan."

"For what exactly?"

"Landing up both here in the past this way...and getting you embroiled in all of this...mucking you down involuntarily in this ongoing quagmire of filth and kriff'd upedness. Bad enough to have to deal with it again on my own, without also having to drag you through the same cesspool of banthashit too."

Kanan presses his lips together instinctively, fighting back a thousand responses and denials to those words. Because yes - as much as he wants to say in rebuke of that kind of thought pattern, Ezra doesn't need anyone at this point to dismiss or invalidate his feelings. Especially if this is the first chance he's really had since the attack in question first happened to even try and acknowledge the attempted rape he'd experienced.

"I seriously considered...just not telling you about at all, initially. Trying to keep it hidden instead with long sleeves and pants and stuff until all the damage just healed up again...but the clothes I bought by eye at the store ended up being way bigger on me then I first expected them to be and... we can't afford for me to be a spineless coward like that right now, can we? Not after the way that you insisted earlier on us both coming back into the city the way we did. I'm going to be kriff for backup for awhile, aren't I, after all? When I'm without out any kind of weapon and there are currently bruises pretty much all over most of me. I mean yeah, Kanan, I've still got my Force Powers...but those'll draw a lot of notice to us if I use them too much right now under the present circumstances...and I'm not as fast or as strong as I used to be and I've got kark for balance, or dexterity, or reach."

Kanan sighs softly, before speaking quietly into the mop of dark hair. "That's not failure on your part for the record, Ezra. No matter what you think. That's just you being stuck with the body that you are in for the moment."

"It feels like failure, Kanan. Felt like failure the first time around I was this size too, if I'm completely honest. I mean the world's just so...so much bigger then I can be right now, for lack of any better way of putting it. Like I said earlier it's like I'm all but completely useless now. I mean kark, Kanan - I'm the one who did this to us, I'm why we're here in the first place and right now I should be focusing on fixing things, but instead I'm currently huddled up in your lap like some kind of Karabast useless baby. I can't seem to make myself function. What the Force is the kriffing matter with me!"

"Nothing." Ezra snorts at that assessment, and Kanan squeezes him for a couple of second, very very tightly before he pushes on. "No I mean that, Kid...stop for a moment okay and look at me." Kanan waits until his Padawan obeys before ultimately continuing to speak. "You're not failing at anything right now okay, Ezra? You're reacting normally to your current biological survival wiring. Children aren't just little adults after all remember? They need their karking parents for a reason at this particular stage of their development, because of the way that human beings are designed...cognitively, physically, hormonally to deal with stress as they age. A kid under threat between birth and ten or so in particular is supposed to want to flee to safe adults in their lives when they find themselves under threat... They're literally programmed to run toward those in their lives with greater capacity to help, protect or otherwise provide for them. That's just the price of all of us having such super, complex mammilian brains...You aren't a failure or a coward just because you're having some trouble coping with what's happening to us right now. Kark I'm having trouble coping with it too Ezra, and at least this body's actually mostly reached full physical maturity."

Granted the reasons that Kanan is having trouble dealing with the ongoing circumstances are actually very very different then Ezra's. His Padawan's clearly feeling lost, as well as understandably humiliated. Whereas Kanan Jarrus, is currently being ripped apart by a very complex and interwoven set of parenting and generally protective instincts.

Because a Jedi isn't supposed to hate after all - and a Jedi isn't supposed to give into serious anger. A Jedi isn't supposed to want revenge or anything like it - merely justice. And a Jedi certainly isn't supposed to feel this level of extreme ongoing protective attachment.

But Kanan Jarrus is failing at all of the above at the moment. He's furious at the current situation at present as well as at the people who's corruptness had initially caused it. To say nothing of the greater societies that casually acknowledge child prostitution as just another kind of filth that exists.

Kanan'd wondered more then once, how someone as young as Ezra had been when his parents had first been taken from him had been able to survive on the streets initially. And once he's started to learn more about about Ezra's early childhood - about his life both before and in the immediate aftermath of his parents, he'd begun to understand that he hadn't...that like he'd had Kasmir initially, Ezra had had various people when his parents first disappeared who'd intervened to help teach or otherwise assist him.

But he'd clearly mistakenly replaced the word assist in his mind with another word entire: namely protection. Which Ezra clearly hadn't had...the proof of that much is currently all over his petite too thin body. And kark the kid hadn't even been technically raped the other day - someone had just attempted...not that that fact had really matter all that much to Ezra's world view at the time the assault had first happen. If attempted rape was all about the theft of someone's power, then certainly Ezra's own sense of both power and security had been brutally taken away from him by the men who'd first tried to recruit him into sex work -and then attempted to punish him for having the gall to actually refuse them. 

Men who were still out there somewhere on the streets of Capital City tonight waiting for their next opportunity to prey upon and exploit not only Ezra but also who really knew how many other hungry or otherwise vulnerable children.

Men of whom his Padawan, is subconsciously terrified. 

And that fact rankles Kanan. Rankles some part of the older Jedi badly. Not because he blames Ezra for the instinctive reaction ... As he'd told the eight year old only seconds seconds ago his current reactions are actually completely on key for any relatively young scared child. To say nothing of an eight year old who'd already been aggressively attacked by one or more of the adults from whom they were now instinctively fleeing.

Still Kanan's pissed at the present situation because Ezra has had to learn the hard way to run at all. He's pissed that this kind of knowledge - this kind of fear has been allowed to become the purview of any young child do to society's greater inaction. Especially since said child is one that Kanan long ago stopped thinking about as anything less then completely and utterly his.

Ezra Bridger has a master now. Said master has what some of the older Knights in the old Jedi temple might have referred to an ongoing 'attachment issue.' Or as Kanan Jarrus himself would put it, any reasonable parent or wolve's level of both pissy and protective.

No wolf in their right mind wants their cub wandering around in the same territory as any kind of dangerous predator after all. No wolf in their right mind builds a den near said predator to karking begin with. Though yes occasionally a highly angry alpha male or female may have to deal with said predator suddenly revealing himself out of the blue. Usually with the background assurance that the rest of pack is available for emergency babysitting when or if that kind of thing happens.

Kanan on the other hand has no such support system right now, and he's suddenly painfully aware why back during his years in the temple Padawan-Master pairings were usually begun in the early teens, and why the Padawans chosen earlier then that under more unusual circumstances rarely left the temple with their Masters rather then staying with Grandsire or other friends of their Masters if they accepted out of temple missions.

Because a Master with a Padawan under threat in situations like the one that he and Ezra are in right now?Is essentially just a wolf with an unignorable predator in their territory, a barely weaned cub and no real den or pack mates to help them deal with the ongoing situation.

Well no pack mates in Kanan's case right now, except for maybe one, at this stage particular stage in his life

And force but he knows exactly what that means.

Kanan? Is about to through the no doubt hightly regrettable experience of making a proverbial 'Grandpa' out of karking Janus Kasmir.


End file.
